The city knew.
It pulsed beneath Kael's boots with each step, as if Spinedral itself had tasted the bloom inside him—and hungered for more.
He did not return the way he came. The Black Temple had no such mercy. Corridors shifted, walls moved like muscle, and the exit became a maze of breathing stone and rotting incense. Kael didn't fight it.
He walked.
The root whispered to him now. Louder. Hungrier. No longer content to sit dormant—it reached, exploring his veins like a lover's fingers tracing old scars. His breath came shallow. Every blink stung.
When he emerged from the temple's underbelly, it was not into the city he'd left.
Spinedral had changed.
It always had.
Now it showed teeth.
The sky churned with meat-colored clouds, throbbing slowly like diseased hearts. The buildings leaned toward each other, whispering masonry gossip. Windows blinked open and closed. Streets twisted—not metaphorically, but with actual ligaments folding the cobblestones like disjointed knees.
Kael exhaled.
The air smelled of rusted fruit and mourning.
And something else—
Meat.
Every breath tasted like gnawed cartilage and wet velvet.
[Synchronization: 37%]
[Root Response: Stimulated by Flesh-City Signal]
He walked.
Through the Hollow Market, where vendors wore masks stitched from their own skin, selling jars of preserved laughter and spine-fluid in fluted glass.
Through the Mawing Steps, where each stair bled when stepped upon.
Through the Hinge District, where the walls whispered his name.
Kael's path bent unnaturally. He didn't choose the direction—it pulled him. He was no longer a stranger. Not to Spinedral.
Not to whatever lived beneath it.
They knew him now.
And in one alley—narrow, dark, littered with shattered bones polished like glass—he found her.
Pith.
Her eyes were empty now.
Hollow.
Not sewn shut like the children in the temple.
But peeled.
As if she had looked too long into something that looked back.
She didn't speak at first. Just placed a small, wet bundle in Kael's hand.
A tongue.
Still warm.
Still twitching.
He didn't flinch.
Pith whispered, "It's not over."
Kael asked nothing.
She said, "He was only a finger. Armin."
Kael nodded slowly. "What's the hand?"
She blinked. Not like a child. Like something pretending.
"The thing below the city. The thing that dreams in seams and marrow."
He felt it then.
A vibration in his teeth. A pressure behind his eyes.
The city was listening.
"And what does it want?" Kael asked.
Pith's smile was sad.
"You."
The walls groaned.
And from the far end of the alley, a shape moved.
A tall figure. Cloaked in layers of stitched meat and featherless wings. No face. Just a carved spiral where the head should be.
Kael stepped back.
But Pith held his arm.
"You can't run now. You've been chosen."
The figure approached.
It didn't walk. It undulated. Like a ripple of purpose through flesh.
Kael reached for the root.
It responded—but hesitated.
[Root Signal Disrupted]
[City-Flesh Interference Detected]
The figure raised its hand.
And the wall behind Kael split open—not cracked. Split. Like a mouth.
It spoke.
A thousand voices.
Each one Kael's own.
"YOU WILL BLOOM."
Kael roared. The sigil on the tooth—still in his pocket—flared like a flare-bomb in pitch dark.
The alley screamed.
Pith vanished.
The figure staggered.
And Kael ran—not away, but into the bleeding mouth in the wall.
He was swallowed whole.
He fell.
Not down.
Inward.
Into bone cathedrals and veined libraries, where books screamed when opened. Into kitchens where meat peeled itself into recipes. Into a world between the walls.
A second city.
Older.
Truer.
Here, the architecture was alive. Streets breathed. Lamps wept pus for light. Choirs sang in basements, harmonizing with the creak of marrow in the walls.
Kael hit the ground hard.
His skin tore open on impact.
But the root surged outward.
Protected him.
Wove itself into the floor.
[Synchronization: 44%]
He stood.
Alone.
Until he wasn't.
A woman stepped from the wall.
Or maybe she had always been part of it.
Her dress was made of pages. Her hair was thread. Her eyes were deep holes that shimmered with worms.
She bowed.
"Welcome to the Under-Spine," she said. "Welcome to the mouth of the god you walk."
Kael didn't ask who she was.
Because the root already whispered her name:
Thirn.
The Worm-Binder.
And behind her, rising in the cathedral of flesh and echoes—
A tower.
It pulsed like a wound.
The true heart of Spinedral.
And something at the top was calling him by name.